This season of Star Trek: Discovery has been wobbling between awesomeness and toxic muck, and last night's finale didn't tip the balance. The show has been under a cloud of controversy since before its launch, when fans raged about having to buy CBS' All Access streaming service to watch the show. But then, despite the exit of acclaimed showrunner Bryan Fuller, ST:DISCO debuted to mostly positive critical responses. Now it's time to assess where last night's season finale left us.

Further Reading

Over the season, we've had standout, brilliant episodes mixed in with 60-minute clunkers. Burnham's character arc has been consistently fascinating, but characters like Lorca and Voq/Tyler have slowly eroded from multi-dimensional people into mere plot devices. Most of the show's worst problems cropped up in the second half of the season, when we took a long detour into the Mirror Universe. Though finale "Will You Take My Hand" tied up any number of loose threads, often in ways that were rich and satisfying, the episode also doubled down on some of the series' biggest mistakes.

Spoilers ahead. If you continue to read and then complain about spoilers, you will be forced to eat Saru's magical neuro-tentacles.

The L'Rell maneuver

Perhaps the most unexpected and quite frankly cool move in the season finale was Burnham's decision to install L'Rell as the new Klingon leader. The L'Rell maneuver came after Burnham realized that she was basically in the same position she'd been in a year before, when she mutinied and started the war. Thanks to Admiral Cornwell scheming with Mirror Georgiou, Starfleet was in a position to devistate the Klingon homeworld with its volcano bomb. Basically, she could punch the button and give the "Vulcan hello." Except this time—thanks to everything she's survived this season—she mutinies to stop the war.

I think we can all agree that was a pretty great scene when Burnham refused to genocide the Klingons, and all the weirdly unnamed, unexplored bridge crew members stood up to support her. It was a very Star Trek moment, and actress Sonequa Martin-Green lent moral gravitas to Burnham's speech about how we can't throw away our ideals just because we're desperate. This scene felt like it was earned over the whole course of the season, as we watched Burnham pay for her crimes and try to make more prosocial decisions.

Also, I liked the fact that Voq/Tyler wound up with L'Rell. I was sick of the whole "he's a Jekyll-and-Hyde monster" approach to his character, which made him basically a MacGuffin instead of a person. Suddenly, when he told L'Rell that it was her turn to lead, I was struck with the emotional weight of the fact that Burnham and L'Rell had both been his lovers. At last Voq/Tyler was a person again and he was struggling to resolve a wartime love triangle. Plus, he changes the equation so that we aren't simply left exactly where the season began, with a nationalist Klingon state unifying under the banner of "racial purity." He's the Klingon who loves his people and has loved humanity, too. Maybe he'll be a bridge between the two societies and make it easier to keep the peace.

Sure, there were problems this season. Burnham let Mirror Georgiou beat the crap out of L'Rell, even though she knew they could just go to Voq/Tyler for intel. And there's a lot of nitpicking we could do about whether the Klingon Houses would actually bow to L'Rell instead of just killing her and eating her boyfriend (which is apparently something they do to humans?). But overall, the L'Rell Maneuver was a smart way to set the table for events later in the Star Trek timeline.

All you need is love and prequelitis

As I said earlier, however, lots of things didn't work in this episode. Let's start with the love. One of the most intriguing parts of Burnham's character during the first half of the season was her ambivalent relationship with her adoptive father Sarek.

Let's take a look at Sarek. He's openly racist against humans. He chooses not to let Burnham join the Vulcan Expeditionary Group so that his son Spock can go later (though, thankfully, Spock is like "screw you Dad I'm joining Starfleet"). Sarek refuses to actually call her his daughter, and he is the very definition of an emotionally abusive parent. Giving Burnham this backstory not only made her one of the most psychologically complex characters ever on Star Trek, but it also illuminated one of the biggest social problems the young Federation faces: xenophobia.

But somewhere around the Mirror Universe, the show decided to drop all that. Suddenly Sarek is admonishing Burnham not to be ashamed of who she loves, and is calling her his daughter. I guess maybe we're supposed to believe that he's changed, but we never know why that might be. Plus, all his talk about Burnham's love life—echoed later by Voq/Tyler, who praises her amazing capacity for love—is a painfully false note.

Enlarge/ Great, dad, I'm glad we worked out all that stuff about how you abused me and treated me like a second class citizen in my own family.

CBS

Is a loving nature really Burnham's best attribute? She's a brilliant tactician, a scientist, a fighter, and seeks justice even when it means risking her life. But just because she humps a snacky, semi-Klingon dude does not make her into Wonder Woman. This whole "Burnham is love" idea feels like an effort to erase some of the darkness and complexity of her journey.

And speaking of erasing complexity, the series cliffhanger was an atrocious doubling-down on one of ST:DISCO's worst impulses. Sometimes known as "prequelitis," this is a condition where a franchise revisits events, themes, or characters from previous shows or movies, mostly in an effort to whip up excitement among fans (because after all, new viewers won't know or care about things like Harry Mudd or the Mirror Universe). Bringing Pike's Enterprise into the picture just as we faded to black was a symptom of advanced prequelitis.

The whole point of this series, and this franchise, is to explore strange new worlds. That's what I want to do. Let's turn Discovery back into a science vessel, go on black alert, and explore! I don't need to see the Enterprise again. I've seen it before a million times, both in the TOS and reboot versions. Seeing it as show ends makes my heart sink. It feels like we're headed straight into another Mirror Universe situation, where all we're going to do is re-explore all the things that the franchise has already explored. And what's the payoff? Filling in little historical gaps that only matter to certain kinds of fans?

Coda: Formalism vs. Realism in fandom

I was careful to say "certain kinds of fans" because I think at this point that Star Trek fandom has divided into two groups. Really, this could apply to many highly elaborated fandoms, but we're talking about Trek here. To borrow from terms usually used in legal analysis, these two groups are formalist fans and realist fans.

Formalists view all of Star Trek as arising out of one, originary text: Star Trek: The Original Series. A few of the movies might be allowed to serve as originary texts too, depending on how orthodox the fan is. All other Star Trek properties, from books and movies to TV series and games, are judged based on whether they adhere to the rules laid out in ST: TOS. Formalists want to see characters, ideas, and places from the originary text. They often appeal to an idea of "real Star Trek" in their analyses, by which they mean "any Trek narrative which stays true to the originary text of ST:TOS."

Obviously the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies are formalist: they return to the originary text. That's why the debates over them were so intense, and full of people yelling about what "real" Star Trek is. You can also see a lot of formalist flourishes in Discovery, especially in the finale. Why was so much of the episode set in the Orion sex club? To give formalists a dose of Orions, which are a staple of ST:TOS. Why did we get the Enterprise at the end? Formalism.

Realist fans, on the other hand, like to reinvent and reinterpret the originary text. They want to apply the Trek rules to novel situations, with new kinds of characters and situations we've never seen before. Certainly a lot of TNG represents realist fandom, as do Deep Space Nine and Voyager. All three series took the show into the future, and reinvented a lot of the fundamental rules for the franchise. Replicators made the Federation a post-scarcity culture, and the Prime Directive became much more robust. We met radically different civilizations, our point-of-view characters became much more diverse. There were androids and shape-shifters, but also a black captain, a female captain, and a number of mixed-race or mixed-species characters.

Star Trek realist fandom strives to bring the series forward in time. But it also wants to integrate new ideas and themes into the already-existing template provided by the original ST:TOS text. The goal for a realist isn't to recreate the thrill of original Star Trek, but to imagine new aspects of the Star Trek universe. Realists still debate whether a show or movie is "real" Trek. But for a realist, that means adhering to an expansive principle of "infinite diversity in infinite combination," as well as sticking with the general injunction to "explore strange new worlds and civilizations."

Discovery had a lot to excite realists. There was a brand-new ship (with spore drive powers!), a new narrative structure that relies on ongoing storylines, and a point-of-view character with a troubled past. But instead of using all the new furniture to explore genuinely new ideas, the show returned to a preoccupation with the Klingon war, the Mirror Universe, and Orion slave girls. This was "real" Trek in the sense that it showed us a bunch of things we loved in the original text. And yet, despite its efforts to pander to formalists, the show wound up pissing them off. The Klingons were too weird, and events of the war didn't seem to fit with what ST:TOS told us.

Realists, meanwhile, groused about prequelitis (guilty as charged) and the show's obsession with rehashing old plots that hadn't really worked the first time around. Too much effort was expended on paying homage to the originary text, and not enough thought went into taking us where no one has gone before. Somehow, by trying to please all the fans, Discovery pleased none of them. Maybe it's time for this series to strike out on its own, chuck all its fandom baggage, and figure out what it wants to be.

Latest Ars Video >

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech visits Microsoft for a first-hand look at the company's new controller that focuses on accessibility.

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech visits Microsoft for a first-hand look at the company's new controller that focuses on accessibility.

200 Reader Comments

I'm an avid Star Trek fan yet I haven't been able to watch a complete episode of this incarnation since it first aired. It's nothing more than a poorly written soap opera with actors in Star Fleet regalia and CGI.

I don't really want to kick this off by starting another debate about the merits of returning to this time period, so I'll keep this to the episode itself. This felt like a rather rushed and clunky episode. They should have either had the season-end cliffhanger be when they got back from the MU and found out how the war is going, or they should have split this into a two-parter that concludes at the start of the next season, as previous Trek series have done with their season finales. On top of all the other possible complaints about the Klingon War plotline they went with...it just felt like they wrapped it up extremely anticlimactically for something that was clearly supposed to be an important backdrop for the show.

However, apparently they may have been in a rush to wrap this up because they're trying to get get rid of the vestiges of the Fuller-Trek vision that they started with. If that's the case then I can't say I have a huge problem with trying to just end this plotline.

I'm going to say, I wasn't a fan of the start of the series. Kept with it though, and kept watching.Thought the mirror universe hook was a great move and really enjoyed that part of the story, right up to the penultimate episode (ignoring the whole deus ex machina bit about insta growing shrooms on a moon).

But then that finale, oof. Probably the worst episode since the premiere. The way they ended it, I think was personally insulting to the cast of Discovery in the sense of 'hey, we don't think your story is strong enough to survive a season break... so we're going to fanwank to get people back'.

Also, I still have yet to come to terms with how if this is taking place in the original Trek timeline... how none of these events which seem to be an extremely pivotal time in the history of the Federation, were ever spoken about in over 15 years of episodes where they regularly commented on historical events in the Federation (not to mention extended universe books which were canon).

If formalism was so important then when do we get to see a real Klingon? I mean, the lobster-heads look cool, but they're not Klingons. Or what about correct uniforms?

Don't get me wrong, I think the season was the start of the next great SF franchise - one that was brutally assaulted and beaten until it kinda sorta fit into the Star Trek mold.

But it wasn't a good Star Trek series, and it wasn't made by people who gave a damn about staying true to Star Trek. The creators of #STD cared as little about this "formalism" you mention as the "I, Robot" folks cared about the work of Asimov. They paid lip service, and that is all.

If formalism was so important then when do we get to see a real Klingon? I mean, the lobster-heads look cool, but they're not Klingons. Or what about correct uniforms?

Don't get me wrong, I think the season was the start of the next great SF franchise - one that was brutally assaulted and beaten until it kinda sorta fit into the Star Trek mold.

But it wasn't a good Star Trek series, and it wasn't made by people who gave a damn about staying true to Star Trek. The creators of #STD cared as little about this "formalism" you mention as the "I, Robot" folks cared about the work of Asimov. They paid lip service, and that is all.

I quit watching before the Mirror Universe episodes when I concluded I didn't like nor felt invested in any character and the storyteller was rushed. The actors are good, there's plenty of action and the concepts it explored in the episodes I watched were interesting. But there was just something about the characters & plotlines that didn't work for me.

I'm an avid Star Trek fan yet I haven't been able to watch a complete episode of this carnation since it first aired. It's nothing more than a poorly written soap opera with actors in Star Fleet regalia and CGI.

Anyway, I'm not very critical with the Star Trek franchise, as long as I find it mildly entertaining, I'm good. The finale was fine for me - I was a bit taken aback by "there's an easy way to blow up a planet and it's just... there waiting to be exploited?" but I can let most things slide.

I remember reading in one of the interviews that they've designed this season to be a ship-building season, and that next season they plan on delving more into the rest of the bridge crew, especially Airiam. Getting a new captain, then, sounds weird because it's clear it's not going to be anyone currently on the Discovery.

If they're going to take us onto Cpt. Pike's ship, it really needs to be brief, to meet the new captain, and done, sort of like the little bit of DS9 we see in Voyager's first episode (featuring only Quark, iirc), or the bit of the Enterprise D in the first of DS9 (only Picard, again iirc). But I'm glad I wasn't the only one a bit like "but wait... I don't want Enterprise-y stuff in here".

As seems to be the consensus (and my opinion in general of the season), this episode just went too fast. It would have done better in two episodes and let there be a bit more talking, even if it just added to the ST lore. For example, when they were searching for the shrine/volcano, why not talk more about the Molor cult? While Molor has been mentioned a handful of times, it's always alongisde more extension discussion on Kahless, and we "know" (at least for TNG+ period) more of the religious rituals/practices. Getting a glimpse into the Klingon equivalent of the Bajaron's Pah-Wraiths would have been cool.

It was great that we finally see how we've gotten around the Federation ideals despite all the concerns along the way, but it just resolved itself a little too nicely. That said, having Georgiou be a likely recurring character is a great idea and I look forward to her return.

I think this series has its merits and quite some nice ideas, but that's not the Star Trek I used to love. Heck, even JJ Abrams' films are better in that regard. Or ST:ENT.But man, the last episode was dumb as heck. Nothing made sense. All that's left in me is some kind of soap opera drama feeling.

I think I'll watch season 2, because I'm a curious idiot. But throughout all this season, I can't tell I was eager to watch the new episode (I watched ep.14 just yesterday).

What really gets me about this series is that #ENT set up the perfect situation for a broken Klingon Empire. In my alternate scenario, the Empire had been shattered by the augment virus, and T'Kuvma wanted to unit both the smooth-forehead Klingons and the ones who avoided the plague.

That would have connected #STD with #TNG and #ENT and explained Klingon belligerence in #TOS while also making room for new stories.

The ending was a stupid pile of crap. There is no reason to believe the Klingon they decided to make Empress of the Klingons would not return to murdering, torturing, and raping Federation members. Her sole goal is unifying the Klingon race, the destruction of the Federation is not a detriment to that goal.

And now knowing how they might blow up Khronos, they can put in safeguards against that.

Why wouldn't she let a united Klingon empire conquer the Galaxy in her name?

Furthermore, what Klingon is going to just accept that she is willing to blow up her home world when her motivation is to unite the Klingon race. She Would Not Have Pulled The Trigger, and the Klingons would have called her bluff.

I quit watching before the Mirror Universe episodes when I concluded I didn't like nor felt invested in any character and the storyteller was rushed. The actors are good, there's plenty of action and the concepts it explored in the episodes I watched were interesting. But there was just something about the characters & plotlines that didn't work for me.

Translation:"I quit watching before the biggest plot twist which began to weave all of the loose plot strings into something cogent when I concluded midway through the season that I didn't like nor felt invested in any character who would only have been, at that point, half exposed. The actors are good, there's plenty of action and the concepts it explored in the episodes I watched were interesting. But there was just something about the characters and plotlines I only bothered to half explore that just didn't work for me.

If you don't feel like watching it, that's fine. But please don't try to offer any critique of the show to friends or family who might be interested if you chose to quit just before what is, by all popular consensus, one of the better plot-twists in ST. A half-formed opinion does a disservice to everyone else who might be interested.

If formalism was so important then when do we get to see a real Klingon? I mean, the lobster-heads look cool, but they're not Klingons. Or what about correct uniforms?

Don't get me wrong, I think the season was the start of the next great SF franchise - one that was brutally assaulted and beaten until it kinda sorta fit into the Star Trek mold.

But it wasn't a good Star Trek series, and it wasn't made by people who gave a damn about staying true to Star Trek. The creators of #STD cared as little about this "formalism" you mention as the "I, Robot" folks cared about the work of Asimov. They paid lip service, and that is all.

At the award ceremony where the serial mutineer gets reinstated, the background people are wearing the classic blue uniforms.

Also, I still have yet to come to terms with how if this is taking place in the original Trek timeline... how none of these events which seem to be an extremely pivotal time in the history of the Federation, were ever spoken about in over 15 years of episodes where they regularly commented on historical events in the Federation (not to mention extended universe books which were canon).

How come we can't just call it ST:D? We call the original Trek TOS, The Next Generation TNG, Deep Space Nine ST:DS9, Voyager ST:V, Enterprise ST:E. Sure, ST:DISCO sounds cool, but it's obviously just a ploy to avoid the negative connotations of calling it ST:D.

How come we can't just call it ST:D? We call the original Trek TOS, The Next Generation TNG, Deep Space Nine ST:DS9, Voyager ST:V, Enterprise ST:E. Sure, ST:DISCO sounds cool, but it's obviously just a ploy to avoid the negative connotations of calling it ST:D.

I think we can all agree that was a pretty great scene when Burnham refused to genocide the Klingons, and all the weirdly unnamed, unexplored bridge crew members stood up to support her.

I laughed at this scene, the brass was set up to be dumb just so Mike could get her turnabout but another mutiny? Really?

What I found funny was that she said she was wrong to do her earlier mutiny while during this muntiny! Because apparently it was better to go to war with the Klingons, have millions murdered, have 1/3+ of Star Fleet destroyed, and almost lose Earth, instead of shooting first.

The writers backstabbed Michael. Her original character was correct, her new enlightened character was 100% feels, 0% logic.

How come we can't just call it ST:D? We call the original Trek TOS, The Next Generation TNG, Deep Space Nine ST:DS9, Voyager ST:V, Enterprise ST:E. Sure, ST:DISCO sounds cool, but it's obviously just a ploy to avoid the negative connotations of calling it ST:D.

Voyager is VOY and Enterprise in ENT. DSC is CBS's official designation for the show's shorthand name. DISCO is more of a fandom thing from the t-shirts the crew wears from time to time.

How come we can't just call it ST:D? We call the original Trek TOS, The Next Generation TNG, Deep Space Nine ST:DS9, Voyager ST:V, Enterprise ST:E. Sure, ST:DISCO sounds cool, but it's obviously just a ploy to avoid the negative connotations of calling it ST:D.

Never seen ST:E before in my life. Not just because the show was simply "Enterprise" for the first 2 seasons. It's always been abbreviated as ENT.

How come we can't just call it ST:D? We call the original Trek TOS, The Next Generation TNG, Deep Space Nine ST:DS9, Voyager ST:V, Enterprise ST:E. Sure, ST:DISCO sounds cool, but it's obviously just a ploy to avoid the negative connotations of calling it ST:D.

Looks like it isn't just me but that has never seen ST:V for Voyager (I always see VOY), nor ST:DS9 for Deep Space Nine (I always see just DS9), nor ST:E for Enterprise (which I have always seen as ENT).

The season finale was horrible. 'If you don't do what I tell you to do I'll blow up the planet' isn't going to work on a bunch of Klingons who have Earth in site and bloodlust coursing through their veins. Terran Phillipa just saying 'ok' and walking away because she got her walking papers? Voq/Not Voq going off to live in sin with his Klingon mistress?

I'm not sure what i watched, but it sure looked like some of the laziest writing i've seen yet in the series. It jumped the shark 2 episodes into the mirror universe and got worse as it went forward.

I like your passion and obviously you're a fan. However, My 13-year old son loves it. The Next Generation is rolling through and they aren't encumbered by the baggage of the past.

If you look at #STD on its own merits, independent of anything that has gone before, then it is good engrossing television, that explores, gender politics, prejudice, intolerance and brings hope.

All issues that we face in a globalized 21st Century world where cultures with huge differences in the way they think are coming together; where the only way governments can limit the amount of change that might otherwise ensue is to censor the Internet so that their citizens can't join up with Facebook or buy from eBay.

The West is facing other societies that favour autocracy over democracy; that still think military might is the way to solve old territorial grievances (South China Sea, anyone?); that want to restore nationalism as a path to ensure their regimes' survival (Russia and China, among many others).

#STD does examine many of the societal and geopolitical issues that we face today; something that #TOS was known for and came to be appreciated more as the years rolled by.

The ending was a stupid pile of crap. There is no reason to believe the Klingon they decided to make Empress of the Klingons would not return to murdering, torturing, and raping Federation members. Her sole goal is unifying the Klingon race, the destruction of the Federation is not a detriment to that goal.

And now knowing how they might blow up Khronos, they can put in safeguards against that.

Why wouldn't she let a united Klingon empire conquer the Galaxy in her name?

Furthermore, what Klingon is going to just accept that she is willing to blow up her home world when her motivation is to unite the Klingon race. She Would Not Have Pulled The Trigger, and the Klingons would have called her bluff.

Stupid stupid ending.

Indeed, this was a good series, but the last episode was terrible. The other huge nonsense was Starfleet sending a loose-cannon ex-Terran Empress to plant the bomb.

And the absurd queen-of-evil stylings of Georgiou were beyond inane. Lorca made a convincing albeit ruthless Starfleet captain. Mirror Georgiou was a joke. They brought the wrong one back.

I didn't think the writing could get much worse, but they found a way. I had to double check my DVR to make sure it wasn't playing at 10x because that's how fast they breezed through that whole Klingon war thing. They must have used the cockroach drive to speed up the battle. Hats off to the editors for taking all those additional episodes, of the Federation battling the Klingon's, and cutting it down to 5 minutes.

And the absurd queen-of-evil stylings of Georgiou were beyond inane. Lorca made a convincing albeit ruthless Starfleet captain. Mirror Georgiou was a joke. They brought the wrong one back.

I dunno, I thought Georgiou's sex scene with those Na'vi's, from Avatar, was very sinister. Only outdone by Ron Howard's brother, in green food coloring, getting Tilly high and having his way with her.

I don't really understand why they never felt the need to move the timeline forward in new shows. Maybe they felt that'd have to use the old cast again? I mean I liked DS9 way back when. Voyager, not so much. But personally, I am bored with prequels.

I'm an avid Star Trek fan yet I haven't been able to watch a complete episode of this incarnation since it first aired. It's nothing more than a poorly written soap opera with actors in Star Fleet regalia and CGI.

You have defined Star Trek, might want to take those rose tinted glasses off. LOL